Are there different types of burn-ins?

After lurking the forums for several weeks I decided to purchase a pair of Ultrasone pro900's as they came well approved for electronic (I listen to mostly Trance and Melodic DnB).

Well, they arrived today and while they do sound very good, I feel like I may have been led astray a bit for the price (paid $300). It feels that while the bass is respectable, its not capturing the punchy rolls well enough to outweigh the piercing highs (sibilance?) I have read that these particularly, as well as many speakers, improve greatly from both burn-ins and amps.

I've read about people just listening to music to burn in, and people that like to strap down a week of pink noise slapping through their phones to hit all the frequencies prior to feeling like they sound the way they are going to sound, so my question is this:

A) If I play music targeted towards the higher ranges will it help to town down the brightness? or does the frequency of the burn in not really matter specifically to one area? and on that note B) if it does matter, should I wait for my amp to get here before I burn them in so that I'm hitting the same levels that I plan on listening to?

A) If I play music targeted towards the higher ranges will it help to town down the brightness? or does the frequency of the burn in not really matter specifically to one area? and on that note B) if it does matter, should I wait for my amp to get here before I burn them in so that I'm hitting the same levels that I plan on listening to?

Thoughts?

It's highly unlikely that "burn-in" (really: break-in) affects how the headphones will sound. It's just a question of you getting used to how they sound. OTOH, the only drawbacks to break-in are the time you spend not listening to your 'phones and the small amount of electricity you use.

Just play some music without a lot of quiet intervals if you want. If there is any break-in, it's probably probably best to keep the drivers moving.

hit all the frequencies prior to feeling like they sound the way they are going to sound, so my question is this:

A) If I play music targeted towards the higher ranges will it help to town down the brightness? or does the frequency of the burn in not really matter specifically to one area? and on that note B) if it does matter, should I wait for my amp to get here before I burn them in so that I'm hitting the same levels that I plan on listening to?Thoughts?

Guys on Absolute Sound and Stereophile, back in the early 90's, some old schoolers insisted that the music you burnt in a set of cans or speakers with had a permanent and lasting effect upon the sound. So if you wanted to play jazz, then burn it in with jazz combos and female vocals. If you listen to female vocals, use that. Classical, use that. These guys insisted that burning in a system with rock when you listened to Mercury Living Presence on reel-to-reel, would harm the system and have the crystals and speaker cones and cable metal align to the harsh rock and leave an imprint that would never go away.

They went as far as to insist that a CD was different than an LP and that tape was the best for burn in.

Well, that's what some of them thought back them when i was reading those mags.

I used to use pink noise, white noise, music, sine wav sweeps etc, but I got lazy and just run music through them for 100 or so hours, 200 if I dont mind my computer being on that long.

Same here. Brown pink and white noise along with a few sine wave sweeps up and down, and some music. I just let them run for a week or two, listening as I go along. Usually burn in over night non-stop. After about 2 weeks my SuperLux 668b's settled in.

Well, there you have it. The real issue is that you don't like the headphones very much. I've burned in a pair of jvc's for well over 100 hours. They do sound better (I couldn't tell you if it's a placebo effort or an actual, objective change), but the sound signature certainly has not changed radically.

I felt the jvc's were rather overhyped as well, but at $35, I had and have little cause to complain.

Hopefully you'll like them after 100 hours or so of burn-in. If not, I hope you can return them or at least sell them to minimize your loss.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrokenSonOfAiur

After lurking the forums for several weeks I decided to purchase a pair of Ultrasone pro900's as they came well approved for electronic (I listen to mostly Trance and Melodic DnB).

Well, they arrived today and while they do sound very good, I feel like I may have been led astray a bit for the price (paid $300). It feels that while the bass is respectable, its not capturing the punchy rolls well enough to outweigh the piercing highs (sibilance?) I have read that these particularly, as well as many speakers, improve greatly from both burn-ins and amps.

I've read about people just listening to music to burn in, and people that like to strap down a week of pink noise slapping through their phones to hit all the frequencies prior to feeling like they sound the way they are going to sound, so my question is this:

A) If I play music targeted towards the higher ranges will it help to town down the brightness? or does the frequency of the burn in not really matter specifically to one area? and on that note B) if it does matter, should I wait for my amp to get here before I burn them in so that I'm hitting the same levels that I plan on listening to?

Without entering the discussion rather burn-in is real or not, I'll just tell what I experienced.

The Pro 900 changed a lot in the process (maybe it was a position issue, drivers not well-aligned, etc), but I thought the Pro 900 went from just bass, to no bass, until they settled (after 150-200 hours - I used some white noise but most of the time I just used the headphones at work); so wait a while before making any decision.

But the pierce highs are part of the sound signature (amping does improve this, the bass gets tighter and highs tamed a bit, but it's still an aggressive sound).

Also, one thing I tried was removing the black stickers that cover the holes on the headphones (remove the earpads and you will easily spot them). Removing the stickers turn up the bass (I tried removing one sticker from each side, but decided to cover them again because the bass was overwhelming).

If you check the forums, you'll find some discussions about the Pro 900 burn-in process and you can also find some mods to tame the highs (never tried this one), and the sticker thing to get more bass.

I think there's not enough evidence proving that one type of "burn in" is better than other. You can listen to any kind of genre, use pink noise, freq sweeps etc.
I doubt the music genre used to burn in a headphone will influence the sound signature

Yes, but we do not know what we do not know thus there is no harm and much to be gained via experimentation.

We have no way to measure sound-stage and map it to a known measurement metric, and that is just one of many aspects.